Google Cuts Recruiters, Video, Notebook, Catalog Search and More

Google slashes 100 recruiters and several Web services, including Google Video, Google Catalogs, Google Notebook, Dodgeball and Mashup Editor. The search engine also moves Jaiku to App Engine under an Apache license and moves 70 engineers from three facilities to others. The moves come a week before Google's fourth quarter and 2008 fiscal year earnings release.

Programmers will then be able to use the open source Jaiku Engine
project to create their own microblogging services and deploy them on
Google App Engine. Incidentally, it is in favor of the more advanced
App Engine that Mashup Editor is being nixed. Mashup Editor
applications will stop receiving traffic in six months, so users should
get ready to move to App Engine.

Not enough potential, perhaps, to escape Schmidt's informal "dark
matter" list. Schmidt drew attention last December after telling the
Wall Street Journal Google would curb the dark matter, or projects that
either aren't exciting or haven't caught on.

These are arguably projects that could also take more away from the
bottom line than it could add to it. These sites didn't make much money
and Google can't justify paying engineers to float and extend them.